Intelligence Absent

"Intelligence is somewhat more than just being intelligent."

- DH Lawrence.

Some people wear smartness like a general affliction of some persistent condition, a snotty nose perhaps. Some wear it like the occasional perfume that everybody asks the name of. Some others wear the serious lack of it like dehydrated souls on the desert. But what exactly goes for critically-acclaimed smart? What is intelligence, in a revised sense and is there enough of it around?

I used to attribute intelligence to those thousand page documents on anthropomorphology and Sciences of the Third Millenium. ( It is a real subject at the University of the Third Age. I kid you not. You must be over 65 years to enroll, though.) One would find one's meningeal juices flowing, reading these documents I speak of, complete with footnotes, addenda and neatly acknowledged references to directors of Institutes for Scientific Research you never knew existed- until someone’s farm blew up on some remote corner of the world one sunny Monday morning due to unknown causes. Intelligent ways of thinking, including not thinking at all, often lead to these interesting theories involving butterflies fluttering to cause buildings to fall, using the power of the mind to bend spoons and such other parlor tricks we used to enjoy watching on the X-Files and talk about all day. Only, now they happen in zero gravity and you would not know that unless you can play guess games with agents carrying classified files at Starbucks outlets in airports. I digress.


Until Dan Brown and Stephen King made a killing citing these incidents in the plots of their books, you could get these substantially inventive and entertaining documents as free e-book downloads. Now it only happens if you use PayPal and you’re prepared to shell out your hair-cut money for a read through. Moan. I used to believe in their original intelligence, because it takes the reach of a graspy intellect to dig patterns in nothingness, the kind of thing I used to get into during school holidays as a kid. I used to cherish the feeling of ‘being in the know’. (a feeling now classified as that of 'a nerd')  I was one among explorers and discoverers in the scientific elite, while the rest of the world glossed over Vogue and read Teen Vogue if they needed to have something to say in groups. Now, I believe more of what I see in the banality of digging for loose change from the patterns of nothingness in my pockets, evidenced by the screeching horror in my voice as I stare at my darkening eye sockets in the mirror, every morning. And I have no pal, paid or unpaid, to pull me out of arguments involving my position on the privatization of outer space vs. the amount of space I privatize on the queen size bed. Whether any of those hours amount to sleep or no sleep is another matter, for another day.


Coming back to intelligence, artificial and real. Recently, I found myself in tears when a robot was brutally beaten and smashed to its titanium bits in the movie Real Steel. My dear brother was reeling from uncontrollable laughter between the words, ‘robot-ahha hha ha haa haah ahhha ahhha haaah- it’s a robot!!’ even as I choked on more salty tears. If I had begun to be emotionally challenged by the notion that pain could be alloted conveniently for a machine to process and we could use the time spared to plan and revel in the happiness of impending victory, then, the sight of the young boy teaching the beaten robot to defend itself at the next round in the boxing ring with your man Hugh Jackman gave me a bit of relief. Eventually the robot even learns to dance and I let out a few giggles,relieved to have found the anti-dote to choked up moments in the screenplay. Like a restless kid in a circus who has just tripped over a stone to find his palms and kneecaps lacerated and face screwing up into a proportionally painful well of  tears, only to be canoodled the next minute by a clown into hysterical and insanely sudden glee.

It was a strange sight, all of it.

And somehow, artificial intelligence and the concept that it could evolve into human intelligence is slippery when wet. Let me explain. It evokes the same response in me that a lone puppy left for adoption in a cage would. I know this because it was the same chord or nerve that was touched, depending on whether you associate ‘feeling’ with the heart or the brain. I have other chords for angry tears, pain tears, fake tears for mourning the death of my ex- ma-in-law and the tears that clean the dust out of my eyes; they are all closer to the duct for immediate release-by strict order. This one came welling up from the deep unconscionably, or should I say it was ‘rolling in the deep’- possibly from a noetic chord called empathy. That's right, noetic. No, not poetic. Well, alright, that too.


So as evidenced by my compelling story, if intelligence is an emotional experience, my point is, there is no point! We all know that emotional experiences seldom need to have a point or a reason to explain why. Feelings just arise, wisp about and leave when they feel like it. Intelligence, then, is in the same category as cravings, addictions, compulsive needs and instinct. And if that is true, intelligence is something we are all born with and it must be present as inconspicuously and ubiquitously as tooth brushes and toothpaste. And that would make measuring intelligence an obsolete idea. It would be like counting the bristles on the brush we used this morning to ascertain its relation to the age when we may need dentures fitted. A pretty unintelligent way to go about it, dare I say...like most things in the study of this subject: human intelligence.

Take for instance our textbooks- they tell us that when our ancestral grandmother Orga decided to use two stones to create a spark, she was using intelligence for the first time. I always thought that she unwittingly caused that fire, when she screamed, throwing things randomly in anger, at our grandpa, poor Bugga, for the things he mostly un-did as a result of his dotage. Which would explain why, even today, you call a woman as having some of that spark when her nostrils flare as you advance at her, never understanding what you did when you put your socks into the laundry with her whites, earlier in the day.

In another discovery affirming my suspicions, the latest research into human intelligence shows that we are indeed becoming more stupid by the day. ‘Humans are losing intellectual and emotional capabilities because we no longer need intelligence to survive, a new study has claimed. Researchers from Stanford University claim the intricate web of genes which endows us with our brain power is particularly vulnerable to mutations - and these mutations are not being selected against our modern society because we no longer need intelligence to survive. If this is true, then we’d be better off storing the intelligence that we evolved with. Because, in a few hundred years, we will have forgotten how we became an intelligent society that outgrew its need for intelligence, then inevitably revert to a state that requires the use of intelligence but can’t. It could be a neverending oscillation between stupidity and boredom. Of certainties, this can be said.


So when DH Lawrence handsomely remarked, Intelligence is somewhat more than just being intelligent, I somewhat suspect he meant thus: choosing the right perfume, spending more on a regular hair-cut and adopting a lonely puppy in a cage and taking those long walks with it, feeling the lilt of loose change in your pockets, rather than buying anything from a screen on your desk; always keeping tissues handy-especially if you are attending a technology convention and never to upset Orga with inane questions, even if you need to know the exact number of bristles on her toothbrush to become the next anthropomorphologist featured on the cover of the National Geographic with the world's oldest dentures in hand, real bad. 

Correct me if I'm wrong

Am I really a writer? Or am I just a diarist for thoughts streaming through, or even just a typist for ideas cascading in from seven windows, ideas that the poor old keyboard cannot express? I prepare to find out...I’ll try a 12 point, Arial Bold, I think, No, a demure 10 pt in Lucida handwriting, methinks again…and in the brilliant world of the alphabet canoodling words of gold with strings attached, strings attached like the spider’s web, to chipping nails and calloused finger tips, I let it rip, putting it out there is worth my while, floats my boat, makes my trip.

I’d like to do a 'Show me the money or your head’s in the duffel bag’ in Bold Capitals-Baskerville old face, of course. 
Arial - too ordinary.No, not even Arial Rounded MT bold. 
Tahoma! - This ain’t no Hawaiian holiday invitation!  
Bodoni MT? Is that a station in Gujarat? 
And, I see there’s an Algerian lurking around. You can even choose between a Centaur and an Elephant for the ride into your wild imagination. 
Rago Italio- is that a pasta sauce? 
Calibri, sounds like a deli cheese. Let’s feast on words, indeed.

So yes, I would like to do a 'Show me the money or your head’s in the duffel bag’ in Bold Capitals-Baskerville old face for my unsuspecting boss, who’ll probably laugh at the joke and look me in the eye with ‘Number your days’ typed on a letterhead in Times New Roman bold. So I dot my i’s and cross my t’s and console myself.  Writer’s don’t work for money, do they? Also, whoever uses webdings, seriously?

Nothing happens. But that's ok. I can wait. I’m not taking the bait. I poach a few apples and let time fly me by. Ah, you know, in the brilliant world of the alphabet canoodling words of gold with strings attached to God as understood by writers..a God called inspiration…sometimes, some portentous times, the phone rings. 

'Yes, hello…What?!  You’re here to see me?  Yes, this is where writers live, Ah, yes, ah, you need directions? Yes, take a right turn at delusions of an artist, stop at the bar, peg a round of drinks on your paycheck, what? They’re belting you out of the establishment? Right. No, don’t take a right, Run!  Leave your valuables, make an escape. Yes, you can grow your beard, change your name.  Do you see a sign board, 'its all a game’…got it? It also says inane things in the sub headline like ‘ Do it for love’, ‘Whatever’s meant to be, is meant to be’.

Are you there yet? Now gather all the facts and narrate these events, be generous with the verbs, and use adjectives sparingly….ah…that’s correct; that is what I just said…put it on paper…well, no? You can’t seem to? Ah, I see, If you can’t do that, you've arrived…yes yes. Of course you can spend some time with us…Do come in, this is indeed where we live, the writer’s bloc.'

Writers are a hard lot to please, something that everybody knows. Ever tried laughter, a joke, any punch lines on them? They don’t really laugh with the masses. They snigger. They play killer whale tricks with meaning, they savour it from all angles, apparent or not, and getting it doesn’t tickle them, it clunks down like coins in a vending machine into a cache of sorts for later use, with a label that reads, I’m onto you.

Serious writers worry me.  It’s not that jokes on sitcoms don't produce the usual guffaws anymore, it’s not even when rubinous verse fails to evoke that glint of immaculate perception in their eyes. It’s not even the absence of the usual sound of a hungry intellect munching what’s left of the brain, to see life alive and squirming, this searing intelligence, that rowdy wit, this exulting meaning of a moment.

No, none of that worries me…I understand… every high has a low, every birthing of an idea is surely followed by a waning moon, the languorous lull of a blank mind, missing status updates, Sorry, the person you are calling is not available. Or if you subscribe to BSNL, Ee number astitva dalli illa.

What worries me, is when expressions turn into stone, into this pale, stoic, gypsum face resembling a war veteran’s statue, unfazed by what existed before all things, unmoved by the prime mover, the origin of All that is: the Word. Yes, writers become immune to emotional expression. They become de-sensitized to the word. They use the word fuck.

Then, the more loaded the punch line, the hollower the cheeks. The longer the lead up to it, the thinner the line of stiff lips.

When writers fall out of love with their muse, they don’t like the opening line, it’s too long. Or the idea is so the done thing. Or literary bravado goes missing, heroes vanish, and chapters evaporate from ink that’s meant to flow at the speed of thought.  

Or you may find pages full of those annoying red waves on MS word that underline your use of words that don’t yet exist. Of course they don’t yet exist dear apprentice wordsmith, duh! And then, it insults the poetry of the moment with suggestions like ‘delete repeated word’, and further suggests geography instead of jeopardy, and you breathe and crack your neck, you breathe again, you patiently ‘add to dictionary’, you ignore, you ignore all…as if all this affords the fullest show of exasperation for minds teetering on the very edge of reason…also the reason why writers have acquired a reputation for being weirdly excitable, suddenly explosive and disturbingly quiet creatures, I imagine.

When writers fall out of love with their muse, memories escape recall, semantic analysis doesn’t yield the damn derivation, the dialectic dribbles, articulation stops mid-sentence and the C word arrives. No, Don’t. Don’t guess it, don’t think it.  Never mention it by name, like Harry Potter says of his mortal enemy.  

The Critic, he is the Valdermort in a writer’s life.  He lives in the same body, walks through the same mind, dreams the same dreams insidiously, he lives to cut, blunt, full stop...to erase. His mission: to cause the crash of the hard drive after the last word.

Writers in the past used to live their lives, the critic begins, not borrow from the lives of others who did. Where’s the plot? Hello! Seems like we’ve lost the plot.  Where’s the hero of the story, where’s the grist? The grime? The grill? The sauce? Where’s the anti – hero, who makes being bad so good that I want to be him? Where’s the serial killer, posing as a lover? Where’s the friend who would give his life for you? Why are you not taking it? And why are you ignoring me?

Where’s the contrarian in the 21^st century? The critic asks, in the same way you would ask, ‘Where’s the bottle of fig jam we got from the market yesterday?’  The critic sees no difference, the profound and the profane share the same origin, ha ha ha, he observes, as if he was created solely to over-simplify and trivialize. You pass the jam even as you hear that muffled voice under his breath, 'Deplorable, yes, yes, the state of writing, deplorable indeed.' 

Sharpen this bit, elaborate that part, oh, that’s so lame, so predictable, so melodramatic, so cheesy, so yesterday, change this here, and that, we won’t need that. A hundred voices, white noise, neurons burn out at the synapse, not a single muscle moves.  You feel the fear and do it anyway, burn those pages, smell the gum on fire and watch the flames. Why? 

Because the author of your life is you.  And because the author of your life, is you.

Ticket to Monsoon

So we've left a place called Blue Sky

Where everything is always as clear as day.

I have a ticket to Monsoon

where waters nourish, I’ve heard

the what, the why, the how and where

of one’s unresolved bearings...

The people of Monsoon, they cheer,

They warn me of what’s to come, of lashings,

and of molten vapours that sting

And of a sound that is more than I can bear…

Clouds are celebrities in monsoon

A trillion volt percussion event opens the show

They gather on the sly, mischievously, I’m told

Rather fickle creatures they are

Making promises wherever they go.

Silence, guest of honour, She arrives

She is the calm before the storm

She calls to the clouds, all dark and blue

Bursting at their seams in a biting cold rage

Then it begins, first as a lustful roar,

I hear it everywhere; I feel it in my core

Thunder’s symphony begins a celebration in the sky

With rowdy clouds, dancing into the night

with nourishing sweetness, the waters pour.

Midnight comes with a full moon up high

Those warm wet drops recede from Her expansive eyes

Through gullies and rivers and the great seas

And us, awestruck, passers-by.